Secure Autoconfiguration and Public-key Distribution for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks Hongbo Zhou Matt W. Mutak Lionel M. Ni Dept. of Computer Science Dept. of Computer Science & Dept. of Computer Science Slippery Rock University Engineering Hong Kong University of Slippery Rock, PA, USA Michigan State University Science & Technology
[email protected] East Lansing, MI, USA Hong Kong SAR, China
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract—Security is extremely important for the deployment of (3) The assumption underlying the MANET is that all the a Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) due to its openness to nodes (or most nodes) cooperate to function properly. A attackers, the absence of an infrastructure, and the lack of malicious node can undermine routing fabrics and other centralized administration. Most research efforts have been services passively (by dropping the packets that need to be focused on secure routing protocols, the distributed certificate forwarded) or actively (by injecting false information into the authority, and key distribution, while a few projects have focused on secure autoconfiguration. However, the importance of network or altering the packets in transit); integration of a secure autoconfiguration and public-key (4) It is more difficult to identify the source of a message distribution has been neglected. This paper presents a secure in the MANET than in the hardwired network because of the autoconfiguration and public-key distribution algorithm to absence of an infrastructure and the lack of centralized achieve uniqueness of address allocation and secure public-key distribution when a new node joins a MANET, which provides administration. the bootstrapping for building a distributed certificate authority Thus, a seemingly easy task may become difficult when (DCA) in the network where a trust relationship is absent.